I really enjoyed this, and agree that it makes more sense to think of ourselves as the embodiment of relationship. We're in relationship with all these different aspects of ourselves, past/present/future.
Hi Louise! Thank you so much! 🤗 It's so interesting that you mention past/present/future here, lately I've been thinking a lot about the self as relationship, in relationship with time. Always more questions than answers though!
Yes, that's such a fascinating topic to me, too. Things sure get a bit loopy once we consider ourselves through time. For instance, if time doesn't really exist, can there be past lifetimes, or are they actually parallel lifetimes? Does any given moment exist forever? And so on and so forth. (Like you said, more questions than answers.)
I just read your 'About' page. I love your work, Jenna. And your mission statement:
"I want this to be a community of people honing their practices together. Then each of us, in turn, can take our practices into the world to help make it a place where all beings can live their most fulfilled lives."
Your journey and work, although very different, resonates with mine.
I wonder how you make files downloadable on substack. (I might want to do that too)
I just read your About page too and I wish you could see my face. Mouth open, heart-filled eyes. What you're creating is exquisite. I LOVE the concept of symbiocene! How absolutely wonderful. I can't wait to dig into your posts. ❤️
I've only tried including a downloadable with a pdf file (but I imagine it would work for .docx the same). I just drag the file from my computer (I use a mac so I drag it from finder) and drop it right into the post that I'm writing. Substack automatically uploads it there. Once it's in the post, you'll see a menu button you can click next to it to edit the name, add a thumbnail image, etc.
yes Synchronosophy is about THE WORK (interwoven with my journey). I only started it this year. Here I am posting one chapter a week ~ to add up into a book. And because I am adding other short posts in between, I thought I might offer the chapters themselves in sections as downloadable files.
Symbiopædia is the one I started on Substack first, because I am going to introduce quite a few new words in Synchronosophy. So rather than adding a glossary at the end, I decided to introduce a new 'Symbiocene-friendly' vocabulary right from the start, so readers can always look up the words in my glossary of the 'wildwordwoods of Symbiopædia' ~ and I don't have to clog up the flow of my book with too many linguistic excursions.
I'm so happy that the concept of Symbiocene resonates with you❣️ I thought so... because that's kind of what you're writing in your statement, without explicitly mentioning the word.
Excited to meet you here on Substack, and thank you so much for the quick 'techie-lesson' 💕🙏
This is so interesting! I love the concept of Self of the Wintu. And Yes! The consciousness of our ancestors is of course present in many ways, including inter-generational trauma, which means we can heal ancestral trauma. Thank you Jenna! 💕🙏 This resonates with me on many levels.
Hi Veronika! I love that you specifically brought up the ancestors. Ancestral healing is at the core of my work. You said: "...which means we can heal ancestral trauma" so much yes to this! In fact, I think this is something we're meant to do, and by doing so we shift the whole self.
Totally agree. I'd love to hear your thoughts on my next chapter in Synchronosophy, which happens to circle in on 'Ancestral Trauma'. That's what fascinates me so much about healing, that we can transcend the (apparent) boundaries of space and time.
I find it interesting to contemplate that we are only borrowing these atoms that make up “me” for a little while. If I can see that process of shedding and acquiring atoms in a time lapse, it becomes akin to the flow of water, time, experience…and really expands and deepens my conception of impermenance.
This was amazing. If follows the book I have been reading by Thich Nhat Hanh called the “The Other Shore”. If you ever watch the tide come in and out, the water takes a little bit of the sandy beach with it. The child in me often wonders does sandy beach want to go with the water. Nothing is separate. Everything evolves and is interconnected. I love your post.
Hi Terri! Thank you so much for your comment! ❤️🤗 I love that you wonder about the sand. I do the same thing. I have a very loving relationship with stones (and I think of sand as tiny stones) and my general sense is that they do like the opportunity to be moved when possible. (Incidentally, I wrote a post about the stones a few weeks back in case you're interested: https://witchcraftandmetaphysics.substack.com/p/the-way-of-the-stones ). Thank you so much for the book recommendation too! I'm going to grab that one right now!
Thank you for the recommendation. I love my stones and crystals. I found a stone outside my house which was my grandma’s house before she passed. I have been carrying it around in my coat pocket. I guess I may have been rude for not asking but I almost felt like it asked me to pick it up. I often hold my stones and ask them for wisdom and often they give it to me through my Buddha tarot cards. The stones are wise.
❤️❤️❤️ I love that you carry that stone around in your pocket! That makes me so happy. It warms my heart to know there are so many other lovers of stone out in the world. Thank you for sharing this experience with me!
Oh WOW!!!! Jenna, this is amazingly AMAZING! I am both blown away and yet, and yet, what you write here makes so much sense. Oh my! This is perfect!!!
I love this quote: "By viewing ourselves as living embodiments of relationship, we can better understand how to nurture our Container of Self. We can learn to actively listen to all aspects of ourselves and intentionally seek alignment." To be able to listen to ourselves... THE ALL OF US..To be able to nurture our Container of Self, because we listened to ourselves...imagine the health of the planet - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually! Imagine how in pure alignment we would be if we listened to ourselves on such a deep deep level.
Oh Jenna! This is GOLD! By listening to our FULL SELVES we are also listening to EVERY OTHER BEING that makes up ourselves...and then in doing so I only see that PEACE and LOVE will transpire.
It brings that saying "brothers and sisters we are all one" to mind...we are so connected...to everything and everyone...
Thank you so much, Sam! ❤️🤗❤️ You nailed it here! I so love everything you've said. If we can all learn to nurture and tend this container of self, beautiful relationship with everything follows. I believe to my core that we (as a collective, as a species) can do it.
Our Authentic Self is an organism that is an happening just like the bees, birds, trees happen by themselves we're also an happening that happens by itself, we don't beat our heart, grow our hair or digest the food all this happens by itself and there's the separate self that is a false idea of ourselves that is not ourselves and that we identify with in our day to day life.
This idea of ourselves projects us as separate from our happening neglecting how we are an happening. We've accumulated our body overtime through eating so our body is not us, our thoughts and emotions come and go we can't identify with them, our name is nothing but a means of identification among people, our career is what we do not us, it's clear we're not any of this things so it begs the question, who are you? The you that lay on the maternity bed before aquiring any name, nationality, growing your body, getting family identify, the you that didn't know anything or identify with anything.
I love this, thank you! The self as happening.❤️ And also, the self that is nothingness and everythingness before identity. It's so much more (in terms of expansion) than we tend to have awareness of. I love pondering all of this.
Jenna I too feel we are a collaboration, collective, mixture of so many parts and entities. And in constant exchange with everything each and every moment. I remember in college when I was taking a microbiology course, I was blown away to learn that their are ten times the amount of microbes in and on our bodies then the number of cells our bodies are composed of. So who truly lives in the form? I love that you speak to "relational living". I too feel that relational living is what we naturally are, time for a wake up call in our culture and society to this greater truth. Image the healing...
The microbes! I really am more microbe than I am "me". It's so fascinating. And I think of you often when I write about relational living. I know you're right there in that message with me. Liminality is relationship. The vesica piscis of it all.
While ingesting an ethnogenic plant years ago, I experienced each eyelash on my right eye saying, I AM. After you deconstructed the idea of a single self from which the world is seen, I feel the important part of your exploration is consciousness, not the physical entities. That leads to your other statement, we are relationship. We aren't separate. When I meditate, I go back to that perspective which feels like the heart source. It carries over into the daily life. I'm not creating strategy or empowerment because that's the person (single entity) again. Trust that you are in relationship and "guided" to the places and people where you belong in the flux.
This is a beautiful reflection, thank you Julie! What a profound experience you had with every eyelash saying "I am." That's a direct experience of what my guides told me. How powerful! Every speck of "matter" has consciousness, which means "I am." So cool. It is such an interesting thing to let go of the idea that "I'm" running the show (and a very challenging thing that I'm only beginning to try) and instead be a sort of steward for the relationship. Making a practice of returning to heart source feels like an essential part of this. Thank you again, Julie!❤️
This is a fascinating post, Jenna, and thank you so much for the mention - there is a lot of synchronicity with Song of Myself. But I am really taken with the idea that "inanimate" objects in fact to have consciousness, and even just a moment of thought about it reveals that all the atoms and molecules of our own brains and consciousness and self are participating in our "selves" in an amazing dance. So much we just don't know, so great to keep our minds open... 💛🧡🩷
The self as participation. I love that image, Troy! Participating in the dance, in the relationship. And yes, agreed, mostly we don't know. An open mind is essential. Thank you, again, for your work on Song of Myself. I'm loving it so much!
Lee’s take on the Wintu view is a beautiful framing. I’ll want to sit (and move) with that for a while…. In addition to the relational, which is ever alive and vital, something I play with is cultivating a “nested” sense of embodied self/identity on many scales. Individual body within its immediate nearby (yard, forest, beach…whatever your body is seeing, smelling, hearing right now), that place within the larger body of the region, regional in its relational place within the body of the continent….and actually on out to some visceral sense of the actual physical layout and movement of the “solar body” of earth and its siblings circling the sun, and on to awareness of the galactic landscape we see through the year’s nights. That can sound abstract, but the practice is in feeling the sense of self and identity expand to encompass these larger scales….. This Wintu image of the soft/permeable edges of self is a wonderful aid in this.
Oh my gosh, on the comment below, I literally just wrote this phrase: "It's like the Russian nesting dolls of living environments." How apropos! I love that you relate this to place/space. In an upcoming post in this container series, I'll be exploring my notion of the container of space. What you offer here has added to that in a profound way. I tried your exercise, viscerally feeling this body in space, then feeling that space in its space (as a sort of melting/fading into the next layer), and on out as far as I could. I don't quite have the words for how deeply this practice has impacted me, both physically and in terms of my perspective. Thank you so much for this. As you said at the beginning, I'm going to sit and move with this for a while. ❤️
I think it's such a fascinating topic! It's so curious to think that we have little beings (cells) inside of us, and that they're conscious. It's like we are a big living environment, living in an even bigger environment (Earth), living in an even bigger one (Universe), and so on. The thought of having living thingies inside of me makes me want to take care of my health even more - we all need it. Great article! Thought-provoking!
I love this, Mindy! It's like the Russian nesting dolls of living environments. And I so agree with you that it makes me want to take better care of my health. It's not just "me" I'm caring for, but I'm the steward for this whole environment of beings. Thank you so much for commenting! 🤗
I really enjoyed this, and agree that it makes more sense to think of ourselves as the embodiment of relationship. We're in relationship with all these different aspects of ourselves, past/present/future.
Hi Louise! Thank you so much! 🤗 It's so interesting that you mention past/present/future here, lately I've been thinking a lot about the self as relationship, in relationship with time. Always more questions than answers though!
Yes, that's such a fascinating topic to me, too. Things sure get a bit loopy once we consider ourselves through time. For instance, if time doesn't really exist, can there be past lifetimes, or are they actually parallel lifetimes? Does any given moment exist forever? And so on and so forth. (Like you said, more questions than answers.)
I just read your 'About' page. I love your work, Jenna. And your mission statement:
"I want this to be a community of people honing their practices together. Then each of us, in turn, can take our practices into the world to help make it a place where all beings can live their most fulfilled lives."
Your journey and work, although very different, resonates with mine.
I wonder how you make files downloadable on substack. (I might want to do that too)
I just read your About page too and I wish you could see my face. Mouth open, heart-filled eyes. What you're creating is exquisite. I LOVE the concept of symbiocene! How absolutely wonderful. I can't wait to dig into your posts. ❤️
I've only tried including a downloadable with a pdf file (but I imagine it would work for .docx the same). I just drag the file from my computer (I use a mac so I drag it from finder) and drop it right into the post that I'm writing. Substack automatically uploads it there. Once it's in the post, you'll see a menu button you can click next to it to edit the name, add a thumbnail image, etc.
AND I just saw that you have a second Substack...Synchronosophy! 🤗
yes Synchronosophy is about THE WORK (interwoven with my journey). I only started it this year. Here I am posting one chapter a week ~ to add up into a book. And because I am adding other short posts in between, I thought I might offer the chapters themselves in sections as downloadable files.
Symbiopædia is the one I started on Substack first, because I am going to introduce quite a few new words in Synchronosophy. So rather than adding a glossary at the end, I decided to introduce a new 'Symbiocene-friendly' vocabulary right from the start, so readers can always look up the words in my glossary of the 'wildwordwoods of Symbiopædia' ~ and I don't have to clog up the flow of my book with too many linguistic excursions.
I'm so happy that the concept of Symbiocene resonates with you❣️ I thought so... because that's kind of what you're writing in your statement, without explicitly mentioning the word.
Excited to meet you here on Substack, and thank you so much for the quick 'techie-lesson' 💕🙏
This is so interesting! I love the concept of Self of the Wintu. And Yes! The consciousness of our ancestors is of course present in many ways, including inter-generational trauma, which means we can heal ancestral trauma. Thank you Jenna! 💕🙏 This resonates with me on many levels.
Hi Veronika! I love that you specifically brought up the ancestors. Ancestral healing is at the core of my work. You said: "...which means we can heal ancestral trauma" so much yes to this! In fact, I think this is something we're meant to do, and by doing so we shift the whole self.
Totally agree. I'd love to hear your thoughts on my next chapter in Synchronosophy, which happens to circle in on 'Ancestral Trauma'. That's what fascinates me so much about healing, that we can transcend the (apparent) boundaries of space and time.
"And, if that wasn't enough, we are also made up of the consciousness of our ancestors..."
I adore this, Jenna. ♡
Yes! ❤️❤️❤️ I think of you every time I write about the ancestors.
I find it interesting to contemplate that we are only borrowing these atoms that make up “me” for a little while. If I can see that process of shedding and acquiring atoms in a time lapse, it becomes akin to the flow of water, time, experience…and really expands and deepens my conception of impermenance.
I like the idea of "only borrowing these atoms." It's so true...
This was amazing. If follows the book I have been reading by Thich Nhat Hanh called the “The Other Shore”. If you ever watch the tide come in and out, the water takes a little bit of the sandy beach with it. The child in me often wonders does sandy beach want to go with the water. Nothing is separate. Everything evolves and is interconnected. I love your post.
Hi Terri! Thank you so much for your comment! ❤️🤗 I love that you wonder about the sand. I do the same thing. I have a very loving relationship with stones (and I think of sand as tiny stones) and my general sense is that they do like the opportunity to be moved when possible. (Incidentally, I wrote a post about the stones a few weeks back in case you're interested: https://witchcraftandmetaphysics.substack.com/p/the-way-of-the-stones ). Thank you so much for the book recommendation too! I'm going to grab that one right now!
Thank you for the recommendation. I love my stones and crystals. I found a stone outside my house which was my grandma’s house before she passed. I have been carrying it around in my coat pocket. I guess I may have been rude for not asking but I almost felt like it asked me to pick it up. I often hold my stones and ask them for wisdom and often they give it to me through my Buddha tarot cards. The stones are wise.
❤️❤️❤️ I love that you carry that stone around in your pocket! That makes me so happy. It warms my heart to know there are so many other lovers of stone out in the world. Thank you for sharing this experience with me!
Oh WOW!!!! Jenna, this is amazingly AMAZING! I am both blown away and yet, and yet, what you write here makes so much sense. Oh my! This is perfect!!!
I love this quote: "By viewing ourselves as living embodiments of relationship, we can better understand how to nurture our Container of Self. We can learn to actively listen to all aspects of ourselves and intentionally seek alignment." To be able to listen to ourselves... THE ALL OF US..To be able to nurture our Container of Self, because we listened to ourselves...imagine the health of the planet - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually! Imagine how in pure alignment we would be if we listened to ourselves on such a deep deep level.
Oh Jenna! This is GOLD! By listening to our FULL SELVES we are also listening to EVERY OTHER BEING that makes up ourselves...and then in doing so I only see that PEACE and LOVE will transpire.
It brings that saying "brothers and sisters we are all one" to mind...we are so connected...to everything and everyone...
Thank you Jenna. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Sam! ❤️🤗❤️ You nailed it here! I so love everything you've said. If we can all learn to nurture and tend this container of self, beautiful relationship with everything follows. I believe to my core that we (as a collective, as a species) can do it.
Yes me too! I too believe we can do it...oh it is so lovely to hear someone else believes it too... Much love, Jenna xxx
Our Authentic Self is an organism that is an happening just like the bees, birds, trees happen by themselves we're also an happening that happens by itself, we don't beat our heart, grow our hair or digest the food all this happens by itself and there's the separate self that is a false idea of ourselves that is not ourselves and that we identify with in our day to day life.
This idea of ourselves projects us as separate from our happening neglecting how we are an happening. We've accumulated our body overtime through eating so our body is not us, our thoughts and emotions come and go we can't identify with them, our name is nothing but a means of identification among people, our career is what we do not us, it's clear we're not any of this things so it begs the question, who are you? The you that lay on the maternity bed before aquiring any name, nationality, growing your body, getting family identify, the you that didn't know anything or identify with anything.
I love this, thank you! The self as happening.❤️ And also, the self that is nothingness and everythingness before identity. It's so much more (in terms of expansion) than we tend to have awareness of. I love pondering all of this.
Yeah, seeing through this profound existence is just fascinating.
Jenna I too feel we are a collaboration, collective, mixture of so many parts and entities. And in constant exchange with everything each and every moment. I remember in college when I was taking a microbiology course, I was blown away to learn that their are ten times the amount of microbes in and on our bodies then the number of cells our bodies are composed of. So who truly lives in the form? I love that you speak to "relational living". I too feel that relational living is what we naturally are, time for a wake up call in our culture and society to this greater truth. Image the healing...
The microbes! I really am more microbe than I am "me". It's so fascinating. And I think of you often when I write about relational living. I know you're right there in that message with me. Liminality is relationship. The vesica piscis of it all.
While ingesting an ethnogenic plant years ago, I experienced each eyelash on my right eye saying, I AM. After you deconstructed the idea of a single self from which the world is seen, I feel the important part of your exploration is consciousness, not the physical entities. That leads to your other statement, we are relationship. We aren't separate. When I meditate, I go back to that perspective which feels like the heart source. It carries over into the daily life. I'm not creating strategy or empowerment because that's the person (single entity) again. Trust that you are in relationship and "guided" to the places and people where you belong in the flux.
This is a beautiful reflection, thank you Julie! What a profound experience you had with every eyelash saying "I am." That's a direct experience of what my guides told me. How powerful! Every speck of "matter" has consciousness, which means "I am." So cool. It is such an interesting thing to let go of the idea that "I'm" running the show (and a very challenging thing that I'm only beginning to try) and instead be a sort of steward for the relationship. Making a practice of returning to heart source feels like an essential part of this. Thank you again, Julie!❤️
Jenna, I think being an observer is the only response. There's nothing to DO.
This is a fascinating post, Jenna, and thank you so much for the mention - there is a lot of synchronicity with Song of Myself. But I am really taken with the idea that "inanimate" objects in fact to have consciousness, and even just a moment of thought about it reveals that all the atoms and molecules of our own brains and consciousness and self are participating in our "selves" in an amazing dance. So much we just don't know, so great to keep our minds open... 💛🧡🩷
The self as participation. I love that image, Troy! Participating in the dance, in the relationship. And yes, agreed, mostly we don't know. An open mind is essential. Thank you, again, for your work on Song of Myself. I'm loving it so much!
We are fractals 🌀🙌🏼
Yes! I love this, Johanna!
Lee’s take on the Wintu view is a beautiful framing. I’ll want to sit (and move) with that for a while…. In addition to the relational, which is ever alive and vital, something I play with is cultivating a “nested” sense of embodied self/identity on many scales. Individual body within its immediate nearby (yard, forest, beach…whatever your body is seeing, smelling, hearing right now), that place within the larger body of the region, regional in its relational place within the body of the continent….and actually on out to some visceral sense of the actual physical layout and movement of the “solar body” of earth and its siblings circling the sun, and on to awareness of the galactic landscape we see through the year’s nights. That can sound abstract, but the practice is in feeling the sense of self and identity expand to encompass these larger scales….. This Wintu image of the soft/permeable edges of self is a wonderful aid in this.
Oh my gosh, on the comment below, I literally just wrote this phrase: "It's like the Russian nesting dolls of living environments." How apropos! I love that you relate this to place/space. In an upcoming post in this container series, I'll be exploring my notion of the container of space. What you offer here has added to that in a profound way. I tried your exercise, viscerally feeling this body in space, then feeling that space in its space (as a sort of melting/fading into the next layer), and on out as far as I could. I don't quite have the words for how deeply this practice has impacted me, both physically and in terms of my perspective. Thank you so much for this. As you said at the beginning, I'm going to sit and move with this for a while. ❤️
I think it's such a fascinating topic! It's so curious to think that we have little beings (cells) inside of us, and that they're conscious. It's like we are a big living environment, living in an even bigger environment (Earth), living in an even bigger one (Universe), and so on. The thought of having living thingies inside of me makes me want to take care of my health even more - we all need it. Great article! Thought-provoking!
I love this, Mindy! It's like the Russian nesting dolls of living environments. And I so agree with you that it makes me want to take better care of my health. It's not just "me" I'm caring for, but I'm the steward for this whole environment of beings. Thank you so much for commenting! 🤗
Exactly! It's so beautiful, don't you think? It's even poetic. I love it.